Home visits? Was the bar to adopt a one-eyed dog high? He couldn’t imagine how she found homes for any of these animals.

“Kat handles adoptive parent training, volunteer committees, grants, the spay and neuter clinics, and all the paperwork and financials. Trish is the liaison for veterinary care, fundraisers, and the pet food pantry.”

“And what do you do?”

“I communicate with everyone who reaches out to us, which takes quite a bit of my time. I get more than a hundred daily emails and phone calls. I speak at events. Meet with donors. Stay in contact with the county pound. We all split the care and training of the animals.”

“You said I was the fifth employee. Who’s the fourth?”

“Akira, who runs our after-school program.” The dog with three legs sneezed. “I’m anticipating that you’ll spend most of your time at the computer. The rest with the animals.”

“I’m not experienced with animals.”

“Not a problem.”

Maybe not for her.

“We’ll teach you everything you need to know,” she said. A door at the end of the work area led to a smaller room. “This is my office. Please, have a seat.”

She’d painted the walls dark turquoise. Her shag rug seemed like a weird choice for a building that included dogs who might not be house-trained. More cacti were grouped on her Lucite desk next to a lamp, a mug, and an alabaster statue of a pug.

They sat.

It was hard to take her seriously while a dog was draped across her lap like a blanket.

“You make that chair look small and uncomfortable,” she said, obviously amused.

“That’s because it’s both.” Her chair was large and yellow. His was little and patterned, with shiny metal armrests.

“It’s neither,” she countered warmly. “I think it’s just that you’re large and predisposed to discomfort.”

He held her gaze but didn’t reply.

Finley did not subscribe to stereotypes.

That didn’t mean that she failed to note the characteristics of the people she met. She did note them. She just refrained from sticking people into boxes based on those characteristics.

She’d grown up running free across her father’s acres. With a tangle of hair flying behind her and a pack of animals dancing at her heels. It hadn’t been a conventional childhood, and she viewed herself as open-minded.

So, despite the fact that Luke Dempsey fit neatly into a box marked Ex-Con, she steadfastly refused to place him there.